n arbitrary and baseless assumption,
but, moreover, useless for the purposes of explanation which it
professes, as we have noticed of a similar supposition with respect
to the annual cycle."

Of course these passages in no way make against Mr. Huxley's
allusions to Dr. Whewell's writings in proof that, until the
publication of the _Origin of Species_, the "main theorem" of this
work had not dawned on any other mind, save that of Mr. Wallace.
But these passages show, even more emphatically than total silence
with regard to the principle of survival could have done, the real
distance which at that time separated the minds of thinking men
from all that was wrapped up in this principle. For they show that
Dr. Whewell, even after he had obtained a glimpse of the principle
"as a logical possibility," only saw in it an "arbitrary and
baseless assumption." Moreover, the passages show a remarkable
juxtaposition of the very terms in which the theory of natural
selection was afterwards formulated. Indeed, if we strike out the
one word "intentional" (which conveys the preconceived idea of the
writer, and thus prevented him from doing justice to any
naturalistic view), all the following parts of the above quotations
might be supposed to have been written by a Darwinian. "If not by
chance, how otherwise could such a coincidence occur, than by an
_adjustment_ of these two things to one another; by a _selection_
of such an organization in plants as would _fit_ them to the earth
on which they were to grow; by an adaptation of _construction_ to
_conditions_; of the _scale_ of construction to the _scale_ of
conditions?" Yet he immediately goes on to say: "If the objector
were to suppose that plants were originally _fitted_ to years of
various lengths, and that such only have _survived_ to the present
time ... _as could be accommodated to it_ (i. e. the actual cycle),
we should reply that the assumption is too gratuitous and
extravagant to require much consideration." Was there ever a more
curious exhibition of failure to perceive the importance of a
"logical possibility"? And this at the very time when another mind
was bestowing twenty years of labour on its "consideration."

NOTE B TO PAGE 295.

Since these remarks were delivered in my lectures as here printed,